As with many business stories we hear about in Success magazine, and Inc Magazine, the word “passion” is thrown around as if it’s the very foundation for business success.

“Passion” is the media darling for successful startup stories. We hear people like Seth Godin talk about it. Brian Tracy swears by it. Tim Feriss thinks it’s a bonus to have.

Imran Md Ali, who is our featured guest of the month, shares with us his understanding of the word “passion” in the context of entrepreneurship.

Imran is a co-author of Kaizen Business Principles with the legendary Brian Tracy (www.BrianTracy.com) and also author of 2 other books, The 10 Step Marketing Formula and Creating Marketing Breakthroughs, which are available at Amazon and also Barnes and Noble.

In an interview with Imran, he shares with us why passion is the core foundation for business success, and why passion alone will not be sufficient to ensure success.

There are two things which he says are needed, on top of passion alone in order to succeed. The first, is Genuine Domain Expertise.

Genuine Domain Expertise is simply being a real expert in whatever niche or industry you’re in. So if you’re in the restaurant marketing industry, the definition of an expert in Imran’s dictionary, is “someone who is in the top 5 percentile in terms of knowledge in restaurant marketing.”

It simply means that you have to keep learning, and gravitate towards the top of your class (or niche)

This, according to Imran, will give you a platform to operate from. People prefer to work with experts, and experts get paid more for less work too. The reason for this is because we are living in world where expertise is rewarded, and generality is punished with mediocre pays and prospects for jobs.

Here are 2 tips Imran gives to establish instant expertise.

1) Read up for one hour each day, about a topic in your market. At the end of the year, you’d have read about 400 hours worth of material and this should allow you to establish your expertise.

2) After reading, aim to apply your new-found knowledge for free as practise for clients. So if you’re a relationship guru, give away your advice for free in the beginning to practise what you have just read. This concretizes your new found knowledge.

Another aspect of passion would be authority.

Now, in a world where everyone claims to be an expert of some sort, you’d have to climb further, harder, and longer than the rest to establish yourself as a real authority in your marketplace.

Imran Md Ali shares some of the things you can do to establish authority

1) First, get some media coverage. Media coverage is a quick path to endorsed authority. Why? We have, as consumers, been trained to trust the media. How do you get media, you might ask?

Imran advises you to create a newsworthy angle. Get a PR expert to write up a press release, and send it out to all local news channels and magazines/papers. A reporter would inevitably find your story interesting enough to feature it.

Once you have gotten this initial exposure, snowball it by approaching other media sources and showing that you have been featured before. Keep on creating news angles that the media would love and try to be a media darling, and this would pay off in the long term.

2)Secondly, create a blog or website that showcases your past and current work. This is a site that allows you to store your bragging rights. State your achievements on this page and don’t be shy about it at all.

This way, when someone Googles for your name, your blog will appear and they can find out more about you- And the best part is, your website says only the good things about you!

That’s it then. Two things accompany passion, and those are 1) Expertise and 2) Authority

Apply what you have learnt and you will soon be on your way to dominating your industry or marketplace.

Guest Interview written by Christopher Tracy, CEO of CLT Holding and Imran’s marketing client in 2011.

Identify, organize and excite people who are already predisposed to achieve what you had in mind and you’re much more likely to have the outcome you seek. It’s far easier (but less compelling) than turning strangers or enemies into customers/voters/supporters/colleagues. Over time, an engaged and motivated base of followers is the single best way to earn more followers.

You used to be stuck with whoever walked in the door or opened your mail. Today, you change minds indirectly, by building a tribe that influences via connections to others.

Comments by Dr. Letitia Wright

This goes for crowd funding and any kind of selling. We are so often trying to give people what they do not want. Our business, our crowd funding has to offer something people want. WIIFM station is always on!

How to be interviewed

The explosion of media channels and public events means that more people are being interviewed about more topics than ever before. It might even happen to you… and soon.

They call it giving an interview, not taking one, and for good reason. If you’re not eager to share your perspective, don’t bother showing up.

Questions shouldn’t be taken literally. The purpose of the question is to give you a chance to talk about something you care about. The audience wants to hear what you have to say, and if the question isn’t right on point, answer a different one instead.

In all but the most formal media settings, it’s totally appropriate to talk with the interviewer in advance, to give her some clues about what you’re interested in discussing. It makes you both look good.

The interviewer is not your friend, and everything you say is on the record. If you don’t want it to be in print, don’t say it.

If you get asked the same question from interview to interview, there’s probably a good reason. Saying, “I get asked that question all the time,” and then grimacing in pain is disrespectful to the interviewer and the audience. See rule 1.